


Domestication

by imaginary_golux



Series: Strays 'Verse [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-06-07 10:12:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6799642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our trio of fluffballs want very much to build a long-term relationship, but unfortunately there's a covert war going on.</p>
<p>Beta by my Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Poe kind of hopes that Finn and Rey will finish whatever errand they had and come back within a day or two; but the days slip past, and by the time a week is gone, a week of walking a confused Beebee twice a day and trying desperately to lose himself in blueprints and design specs at work, in books or trashy television at home, Poe has resigned himself to the fact that either their mysterious errand is _much_ more difficult than he expected, or they’ve decided not to come back at all.

Of course, that’s the evening there’s a knock on his back door.

Vastly confused - the back door opens onto a fenced yard, and no one should be knocking on it - Poe goes to open it, and stares in astonished glee at Finn and Rey framed in the doorway. At his feet, Beebee goes into small raptures, bouncing and yipping with joy.

They look - they look like they’ve been in a fight, actually. Finn’s wearing some sort of close-fitting black garment, with a really nasty-looking gun holstered at his hip, and Rey is wearing leggings and a tunic of some pale material, and has what looks like a _quarterstaff_ slung over her shoulder. She also has bruises all up her pale arms, and Finn has a half-healed cut on his face that only just missed the eye.

Poe only has a few seconds to take all this in, though, before Finn is crowding him back into the kitchen and kissing him like he’s drowning and Poe’s the only source of air. Poe braces himself on the counter and moans into the kiss.

He’s not sure how long Finn kisses him; but eventually Rey elbows Finn out of the way and tangles a hand in Poe’s hair with the careful gentleness of someone who knows she could do serious damage if she wanted to, tugs him down and kisses him fierce and sweet. Poe is panting when she lets him go.

“I promise we’ll explain as much as we can later,” Finn says, “but right now I would _really_ like to fuck you.”

“Oh fuck yes,” says Poe, grabbing at Finn’s shoulders and hauling him in for another kiss. “Let me - my bedroom.”

“How would you feel about just being bent over this very convenient counter?” Finn asks, grinning. Poe whimpers.

“I’ve got lube,” Rey says cheerfully. “And it is a _very_ convenient counter.” She hops up onto it as if to punctuate the sentence, sitting on the edge and reaching out with her legs to reel Poe in closer. “Yes? No?”

“Dear god yes,” Poe says, and kisses her, and then has to break away and brace his hands on the counter and his head on her shoulder when Finn takes this golden opportunity to shove Poe’s pants down around his ankles, go to his knees on the tile floor, and bury his face in Poe’s ass. Poe’s not an innocent by any means, but he’s never had anyone be quite so _enthusiastic_ about rimming him, and Rey laughs in his ear as he moans.

“He’s been _waiting_ for this,” she tells him, and Poe shivers as she strips his shirt off, wriggles impossibly out of her own leggings. “He’s been _dreaming_ of it. I walk in his dreams, I can see _everything_ he wants to do to you - we want to _wreck_ you, Poe, want you screaming in ecstasy between us.”

“Not going to take very long,” Poe says hoarsely. “He’s not the only one who’s been dreaming of - ohfuck - not this _precisely_ , but -”

“Better hurry it up, Finn,” Rey says, and Poe moans long and loud as Finn’s tongue is replaced by _two_ slick, gentle fingers, which find his sweet spot unerringly on the first try. Rey kisses the moans out of Poe’s mouth, stretches sleek and glorious against him, and if Poe dared let go of the counter he’d be touching her, sliding a hand up under her tunic to cup her lovely breasts or stroke the long line of her back - but he doesn’t dare, because his white-knuckled grip is pretty much all that’s keeping him upright.

He tears his mouth from Rey’s to gasp, “Now, fuck, _now_ ,” and Finn makes a raw, hungry sound and stands, bends Poe over the counter just as he promised and spreads him wide and slides into him as easy as breathing. Poe can’t help the sounds he’s making, hoarse desperate moans that he’d be frankly embarrassed by in any other situation - and then Rey squirms beneath him, spreads her legs a little wider and shifts down and Poe slides into her as easily as Finn has taken him, and all of Poe’s breath leaves his lungs in a gasp of almost-painful pleasure.

“Gonna fuck you into her, make you _both_ scream for me,” Finn murmurs in Poe’s ear. “You want hard and fast, or nice and slow?”

“Fast,” Poe says desperately, and Finn chuckles, sounding like sin itself, and nudges Poe’s legs a little wider, braces himself on the counter, and complies.

Poe muffles his moans in Rey’s tunic, clings desperately to her as Finn hits every perfect spot inside of him, as Rey clenches around him hot and warm and tight, and then Rey leans up and bites at his shoulder, a sudden harsh sting of pain, and Poe throws his head back and _shouts_ as he comes, feels Finn grab his hip hard enough to bruise and pound into him with a bone-deep moan of pleasure, hears Rey gasp high-pitched and pleased beneath him.

Poe’s starting to feel a little guilty about having all of his weight on Rey when Finn leans down to press a kiss to Poe’s shoulder and then pulls out and away, wraps strong hands around Poe’s waist to help him down off the counter. Rey stretches long and sleek, and grins at both of them. “That offer of a bed still open?”

“Yeah,” Poe says, staggering a little as he tries to stand - apparently being very well fucked does bad things for his balance. Oops. Finn catches him and slings an arm around Poe’s waist, guiding him carefully through the house and up the stairs and tipping him gently onto the bed when they reach it. Rey flops down on Poe’s left as soon as he’s settled - she’s lost her tunic somewhere between here and the kitchen - and Finn snugs himself up on Poe’s right, one arm flung over Poe’s chest and one leg pinning Poe’s. Rey grins at them and mirrors Finn’s position, and Poe finds himself thoroughly trapped. Not that he’s complaining.

“Good to have you back,” he tells them.

“We’re glad to _be_ back,” Rey says softly. “We’re sorry we had to leave so abruptly.”

“We’ll try to let you know if we have to run off again,” Finn adds.

“Thanks,” Poe says, and the last thing he notices before he falls asleep between them is Beebee jumping up and settling in across his feet.

*

Poe wakes up in the dark hours before dawn - not surprising, given how early he got to sleep - to his lovers talking near-inaudibly across his chest. He clears his throat to let them know he’s awake, and is rewarded by a messy, delighted three-way kiss.

“So,” he says, into the quiet darkness and the soft sounds of Beebee snuffling as she dreams, of his lovers’ breathing, as they settle in again tucked up against him like he’s a child’s toy, “what exactly are you guys fighting?”

“You don’t need to worry,” Rey says fiercely. “We’ll keep you safe.”

“We’ll _never_ lead them here,” Finn promises, just as fiercely.

“Not _quite_ what I asked, buddies,” Poe says. “I trust you to keep me safe. I want to know what you’re fighting so I can _help_.”

“Shit,” says Finn, rolling up on one elbow to kiss Poe gently. “We don’t deserve you, Poe Dameron.”

“We really don’t,” Rey agrees.

There’s a moment of silent communication between them - Poe is reminded inexorably of the way Trooper and Sunshine used to appear to make plans with only a look - and then Finn says, settling back down, “We can’t tell you much.”

“No,” Rey says. “Not without asking the General.”

“But we _can_ tell you a little,” Finn says. “So. Magic is real.”

“I’d gotten that far,” Poe says dryly. Rey laughs.

“There’s...good magic users and bad magic users,” Finn says slowly. “Light and Dark, if you like; good and evil; whatever you want to call it. And there’s a particularly unpleasant dark mage who’s trying to take over the local magical community. We’re on the other side.”

“And one of the bad guys turned you into animals,” Poe says dubiously.

“Well, no,” Rey says, sounding a little sheepish. “One of the bad guys _tried_ to kill us - I actually think he was trying to turn us inside out.”

“Ew,” says Poe faintly. Rey nods, her head tucked into the curve of Poe’s neck.

“Yeah,” Finn agrees. “I blocked it - but I couldn’t block _all_ of it. Next thing I knew I had four legs. Very disconcerting. But the backlash knocked the fucker out, so we got away alright, even dazed as we were.”

“You pretty much know the rest, since you were involved,” Rey says, a little muffled by Poe’s shoulder. “Once you turned us back, we went and told the General we weren’t dead, and then we found the unlucky bastard who tried to kill us.” Poe can feel Rey smile, and he suspects it’s not a nice expression. “He won’t be trying _that_ again.”

“Good to know,” Poe says approvingly. Anyone who tries to hurt _his_ lovers deserves anything that damn well happens to him. “So. I reiterate: what can I do to help?”

Rey hums thoughtfully. “For right now? Just...be our safe house. We need somewhere we can just be Finn and Rey, not - not soldiers.”

“That makes sense,” Poe says, heart hurting for these beautiful people in their covert war.

“And we’ll talk to the General,” Finn says. “If you want us to. And if she says we can tell you more, then -”

“Yes,” Poe says. “Do that. I may not be able to do magic, but I’ll watch your backs if you’ll let me.”

“Damn,” Finn says softly. “You are ridiculously perfect, Poe Dameron.”

“I shall light a stick of incense to the soul of the asshole who turned us into animals as thanks,” Rey says serenely. “Maybe two.”

“Make it three,” says Finn.


	2. Chapter 2

They don’t stay with him, not really. They’ll be there for a night, two, sometimes even three, warm in Poe’s bed and laughing shirtless at his kitchen counter wearing his sweatpants (they hang far too loose on Rey’s hips, cling delightfully to Finn’s ass) and romping with Beebee in the fenced backyard, and then something will change, some indefinable _something_ in the air, and they will take up their weapons and their warlike clothes and kiss Poe goodbye, leap the fence and trot away in perfect unison. And then they’ll be gone for days - for two weeks, once - without a word. Poe’s pretty sure they don’t send him messages because they’re worried about them being intercepted, about their enemies tracking Poe down, and Poe knows that he _couldn’t_ really do anything against magic, though he’s not exactly helpless. He starts carrying his pistol again, the permit in his wallet and the holster hidden beneath loose shirts, because who knows? Maybe asshole magic users can be shot. Finn has a gun, after all. And he starts making an effort not to stay too late at work, even when the blueprints are _really_ interesting, so that if his lovers come home, he’ll be there.

Poe would kind of like it if they stayed longer, but he understands. He’s been to war. This is not a war he knows how to fight, but he remembers the way he grabbed at leave with both hands when he could get it, tried desperately not to think about it when he couldn’t. He remembers knowing he was going to die, and then not dying; and he remembers fucking whoever offered, wild and unwise, because he wasn’t dead and therefore he must be alive.

Finn and Rey actually seem to be a little bit better adjusted than he was back then. It might help that they have each other - Poe’s beginning to suspect they’re actually mildly telepathic when they want to be, what with Rey dropping casual little lines about walking through Finn’s dreams and Finn getting Rey to move in perfect coordination just by looking at her. Poe didn’t have someone that precious, back when he was young and immortal and invincible and a fool; he didn’t have someone as close as his own breath, as reliable as his own hands. He didn’t have someone to come home to, either.

The thought that he’s an anchor for them is one that comes to him as he’s walking Beebee home from the dog park to an empty house one evening, and makes his breath come short and his eyes tear up; he holds the thought close to his heart, takes it out when his bed is emptier than it should be and wraps himself up in it. He’s what they come home to, what keeps them rooted to the world. Even if he can never fight beside them, that’s still...that’s still a way he can watch their backs, keep them safe and stable and well. It’s something he can do, so he doesn’t feel so helpless as he watches them jog away.

*

“The General says she wants to meet you,” Finn tells him over dinner, several months after the impossible night that two of Poe’s pets turned out to be people. “She says, if she thinks you’re safe, we can tell you more. Not everything, but more.”

“I do understand operational security, buddies,” Poe says easily.

“The General’s...kind of intimidating,” Rey warns him. “You don’t have to. We can just keep...doing what we’re doing, and that’ll be fine.”

“It’d keep you safer,” Finn adds. “Once you _know_ , you’re...it’s more dangerous.”

“Buddy, I am going to have your back no matter what,” Poe says, “so I might as well have as much information as possible on how to do that.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Rey says with a little sigh. “It is Saturday tomorrow, right?”

“Yes,” Poe says, grinning at her. Rey’s always a little shaky on days of the week - comes of spending all her time hunting bad guys, Poe suspects. Not much time for clocks while locked in magical combat. Finn keeps closer track of things like that. Division of labor.

“And what would you like to do between now and then?” he asks, and grins at the identical looks of cheerful lust that earns him. “I’m guessing ‘me’?”

Finn props an elbow on the table and puts his chin in his hand, looking at Poe speculatively. “Pretty much, yeah. You got any thoughts on how, or should I get creative?”

Poe shivers. “Not that I don’t _like_ it when you get creative,” he says, “but I kind of wanted to try something, if you don’t mind.”

“Anything you want,” Rey says quietly.

“It is not,” Poe says carefully, “that I _object_ to being overwhelmed and fucked silly, because please believe me, I do not object in the slightest. But I think I would rather like to get my hands and my mouth on _you_ for a change, buddies, if that’s alright with you.”

Finn and Rey glance at each other and Poe can _see_ their eyes go dark. “Fuck yes,” says Rey. Finn nods enthusiastically.

“Bed?” Poe suggests.

He’s mildly flattered by the fact that Finn and Rey race each other up the stairs. Beebee gives him a long-suffering look and curls up on the couch, and Poe laughs at his corgi and scratches her behind the ears before he follows his lovers up to bed.

They’re sprawled naked across his quilt, kissing enthusiastically, and Poe pauses in the doorway to admire the contrast of pale skin against dark, of the way both of them arch into the kiss in pleasure, hands stroking over each other’s skin. He closes the door gently behind him and comes over to lounge against the bedpost. They’re so wrapped up in each other he suspects they haven’t even noticed he’s arrived, and he’d be mildly put out except that they’re so damn beautiful together. They move like dancers - well, more accurately, like martial artists - who know exactly how the dance should go. It’s startlingly gorgeous.

Finn moves to kiss down Rey’s throat, and Rey tosses her head back and moans, sweet and desperate, and Poe can’t stand back any longer. He rounds the bed and bends over to kiss her, swallow her startled moan and laughs into her mouth when she reaches up to tangle her fingers in his hair and pulls him closer.

Finn looks up. “What’s the plan, then?” he asks.

“New plan,” says Poe, a little hoarsely, against Rey’s lips. “Make Rey come as many times as possible.”

Finn chuckles, throaty and smug. “That’s a lot.”

“Oh good,” says Poe.

“Oh fuck _me_ ,” says Rey.

“Eventually,” says Finn.

The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur for Poe, brief moments standing out in his memory like stars: the taste of Rey as he spreads her legs and licks her open, the way she shivers beneath his tongue and cries out when he finds the right combination of speed and angle and pressure; his fingers pressed up against Finn’s as they slide into Rey’s wet heat, and the way her fingers tangle in his hair as she yanks him down into a biting kiss; the sound she makes after her fourth orgasm, sweet and soft and low, and the way she sags back against the pillows and smiles up at them. The way she tosses her head back and moans when Finn slides into her, the contrast of her pale fingers against Finn’s shoulders, the sweet moan that marks her _sixth_ orgasm.

“Enough,” she says after that one, flapping a hand weakly at them. “Hnng.”

Finn laughs at her, tucks her gently into a mound of pillows and kisses her softly and pets her hair, and then turns and reels Poe in; they roll together on the empty half of the bed, rutting inelegantly against each other’s hips, and Poe manages by some miracle to pin Finn down and kiss him into a moaning heap, gasps out his pleasure against Finn’s lips as Finn thrusts up against him and cries out softly as he comes.

“Never did think we’d find someone like you,” Rey says, later, once they’ve cleaned up a bit and caught their breaths and curled around each other. “It’s been the two of us for so long…”

“Yeah,” Finn says thoughtfully, tucking himself a little more comfortably around Poe and resting his head on Poe’s shoulder.

“How’d you two get together?” Poe asks.

Rey hums. “We’re both orphans,” she says after a while. “We met - there’s schools for magic. We met at one. I think I was, what, seven? And Finn was ten. And someone was giving me crap for not having parents, and Finn spelled the earth to trap the asshole’s feet. Took him three hours and a teacher to get free.”

“I got in so much trouble,” Finn says cheerfully. “Worth it, though.”

“I pretty much just started following him around after that,” Rey admits.

“What she’s not telling you is that when the asshole tried to get back at me, she didn’t even bother with magic, just tackled him into a wall,” Finn says.

“So what I’m getting from this is that the two of you are violent and possessive people,” Poe says, grinning up at the ceiling.

“Damn straight,” Rey says smugly.

“ _Anyway_ ,” says Finn, chuckling, “after that we were pretty much inseparable. And then when we graduated - well. That’s a story for later. Let’s go with, we ended up joining the General’s people, and we’ve been fighting since then.”

“We make a good team,” Rey agrees.

“You must have been utter terrors as children,” Poe muses. “Why do I suspect you were the sort of kids that bit when you were angry?”

“I never bit anyone,” Finn says indignantly. “People taste _awful_.”

“I bit a couple people,” Rey says. “Okay. Several. Possibly many.”

“Oh god,” says Poe faintly. “Forget I asked.”

“Finn’s right, people do taste awful,” Rey adds. “Well. Blood tastes awful.”

“...You drew blood,” Poe says slowly.

“They were trying to take my stuff,” Rey says. “I am a possessive and violent person. You said so yourself.”

“These days she only bites people she likes, usually,” Finn puts in. “And she mostly doesn’t draw blood.”

Poe can’t help but laugh. “I see why you ended up a cat, darling,” he tells Rey.

“Meow,” she says contentedly, and bites his shoulder very gently. Finn reaches across Poe’s chest and runs his fingers through Rey’s hair, scratches gently behind her ear, and she makes a low, happy rumbling noise, and Poe’s heart hurts with how much he adores them both.


	3. Chapter 3

Finn and Rey have been very good about not telling Poe anything even remotely classified, but he’s gathered enough from what they _do_ say - and from the telling silences, too - to know that they both have an immense respect bordering on hero-worship for the woman they call the General. Knowing what he does of Finn and Rey, Poe suspects this General is worthy of every particle of that respect. So he’s understandably a little nervous about meeting her.

The fact that he’s been _blindfolded_ isn’t helping. Finn and Rey were very apologetic about it, and the strip of cloth over his eyes is a bit of Rey’s overwrappings, which smells like her and comforts him a little, but Poe has _never_ liked being unable to see. No pilot does. He trusts Finn, who is leading him carefully through the halls of what must be their base, but that only makes walking blindly at Finn’s side a very little bit easier. The dizzying whirl of magical transit, which both Finn and Rey have already apologized for half a hundred times, certainly hasn’t _helped_ Poe’s feeling of discomfort. But he said he’d do this, and he _does_ trust his lovers; Finn’s arm is warm under his hand and Rey’s voice soft in his ear as she warns him of upcoming turns and stairs. They are doing their very best to make this as painless as possible, and Poe _does_ appreciate it.

It’s just still not fun.

“We’re here,” Rey murmurs in his ear as Finn comes to a stop. “Just a minute while I get the door -”

She steps away, and Finn’s gentle hands tug the hood off of Poe’s head, the blindfold away from his eyes. Poe’s been covered head to toe for the whole walk through the base, in part so that none of the people can identify _him_ \- a safety measure for which he can’t help but be grateful. He blinks a few times to let his eyes adjust to the light, and then focuses on the woman behind the broad desk, who is staring at him in blank astonishment.

“Boss,” he says, startled. “ _You’re_ the General?”

“Poe Dameron,” Leia Organa says, “how in the name of the Light have you gotten yourself mixed up with these two troublemakers?”

“Er,” says Finn, “you two know each other?”

“Dameron here is one of my best engineers,” Leia says. “And I rather thought he was clever enough not to go throwing his lot in with mad creatures like you maniacs.” She grins at Finn. “Your powers of persuasion amaze me, lad.”

Finn laughs. “No persuasion involved, ma’am; he asked _us_ if he could help.”

“And it’s not as though we _asked_ him to buy us while we were animals,” Rey adds, leaning against Poe’s shoulder. “That was all him.”

“Fair enough,” Leia says, smiling at them. “And, Dameron - I owe you a great deal for the care you gave these two, and for returning them to their proper shapes. It’s not a debt I expect I can ever repay, but I do owe it.”

Poe shakes his head. “There’s no debt, Boss,” he assures her. “It was my genuine pleasure.”

“ _That_ I don’t need details on,” Leia says, and Poe grins as Rey’s ears go pink and Finn ducks his head with a sheepish smile. “Come and sit down, and let’s talk about this mess my best warriors have landed you in, shall we?”

Poe takes one of the chairs in front of Leia’s desk; Finn takes another, but Rey chooses to perch on the arm of Poe’s chair, leaning on his shoulder. Poe grins up at her. Finn’s always been happy to cuddle, but Rey, catlike, was a little standoffish the first few days after she and Finn returned to Poe - and then decided that Poe was the perfect person to drape herself all over, and now is rarely more than a foot away from him while they’re in his house. Apparently now this extends to Leia’s office, as well.

“So,” Leia says slowly. “I’m not sure how much of this has been explained to you thus far.”

“There’s good guys and bad guys and magic,” Poe says, grinning at her. Leia scrubs a hand over her face and gives him a mildly exasperated look.

“True,” she says, “if slightly simplistic. But very good work on not telling him everything, you two.”

Rey shrugs. “We _do_ understand operational security, General.”

“Sometimes,” Leia agrees. “So. The problem I am having here, Dameron, is that mages fight with magic. They - we - _can_ be hurt by nonmagical weapons, but it’s harder.”

“Finn carries a gun,” Poe points out.

“All the bullets are made by magic and spelled,” Finn says. “Can’t buy them, unfortunately.”

“Could you make me some?” Poe asks curiously.

Finn glances at Leia and nods. “Sure. Take me a few days, but that’s doable.”

“Good,” Leia says. “And - that’s right, Dameron, you were military before I hired you.”

“I was,” Poe agrees, grinning.

“Hmmmm,” says Leia. “Are you sure you want to work with us, Dameron? Last chance to back out. It’s a lot safer for you if you don’t. You don’t have any of the defenses we do.”

“I’m sure,” Poe says solemnly. “If I can help - then let me help.”

“Right, then,” Leia says. “I’ll vouch for you, if anyone asks - it’s pretty clear these two are completely biased.” She grins at Finn and Rey. “Take him down to Tactics, give him an overview of what we can do and what our enemies can do, and see if he can pick our battle plans to pieces. It’s not as though we’ve got a lot of ex-military people lying around,” she adds to Poe, “so yes. You _can_ help. You’ve got skills we don’t, and they’re skills we need.” She looks at Finn. “I don’t want him in combat, but get him those spelled bullets anyway, lad. Better safe than sorry.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Finn says, beaming.

*

Poe is rather grateful to not be blindfolded as they lead him down to Tactics - a large room in what seems to be the basement of whatever building this is, about half-full of people poring over reports and talking quietly in groups. Finn and Rey commandeer an empty table and tuck Poe into the corner, the most defensible place.

“So,” says Finn. “Where do you want us to start?”

“Start with what you guys can _do_ ,” Poe suggests. “Because at this point all I have is ‘can turn other people into animals by accident.’”

Rey snorts an inelegant laugh. “Okay,” she says. “So there’s...there’s some basic spells that everyone knows. Light a candle, summon an object, the really simple stuff.”

“The sort of stuff everyone tries if you hand them a wand,” Finn puts in. “Though most of the time we don’t use wands.”

“Gotcha,” Poe agrees, thinking about the sorts of small mischief he might try if he could do magic.

“And then there’s your element,” Rey says. “Which - it’s not, you know, hydrogen, oxygen, that sort of thing. It’s the elements the way people _used_ to mean them. Fire, water, air, earth, that sort of thing.”

“Your element - you can kind of manipulate it, use it, better than you can any other,” Finn adds. “So, like, Rey’s a fire mage, so she throws fireballs a lot.”

“And Finn’s an earth mage, so he’s good at making and spelling bullets, because metal comes from the earth,” Rey says.

Poe considers this. “What’s Leia?”

“The General’s element is water,” Finn says. “But - there’s sort of nuances to everyone’s element. So for water, you can have sort of happy rain magic, or you can have smooth lake magic…”

“Or you can do what the General does and have the magic of the deep ocean,” Rey says, grinning. “You know - tsunamis, kraken, that sort of thing.”

“Ah,” says Poe. “I see. Yeah, I’ll buy that. And what can our enemies do?”

“Well,” Rey says, grimacing, “the head of our enemies - they call themselves the Knights of Ren, for reasons I’ve never been quite clear on -”

“I think they think it sounds cool,” Finn puts in.

“ _Anyway_ , their leader is called Snoke. Also for reasons I’ve never been quite clear on. If _I_ was called Snoke, I’d change my name.”

Poe snorts.

“He’s a darkness mage. Demon-summoning, that sort of bullshit. His right hand, guy named Kylo, is a chaos mage, which is fucking awful to fight. Spells go sideways, do things you didn’t intend, it’s just a mess.” Rey shrugs. “The rest of them - some of everything. They _used_ to have an asshole blood mage, but they don’t anymore.”

Finn smiles. It’s a surprisingly bloodthirsty expression. “No, they don’t,” he agrees.

“So they can do about what we can do, roughly,” Rey sums up. “But they want to take over the city and make slaves of...well, everyone else, and we would really prefer not to be slaves, and also not to see the entire nonmagical population be enslaved or slaughtered, because that would just be...bad.”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Finn says.

“Alright,” Poe says. “Then let’s look at some of your battle plans from the past, and you can tell me what worked and what didn’t, and we can go from there.”

“Before we do that,” Rey says, “how the _hells_ do you know the General?”

Poe laughs. “You know she runs a company, in the nonmagical world?”

“Yeah - designing planes, I think,” Finn says, nodding. “Her husband’s a Nu - a nonmagical.”

“Yeah, he’s head of my department,” Poe says. “What was that word you almost used?”

Finn ducks his head, looking sheepish. “Null. Means nonmagical. Kind of rude.”

“Gotcha,” Poe says, filing that term away.

“So you design planes,” Rey says. “That is _deeply cool_.”

“Can magical folk fly?” Poe asks curiously.

“Yep,” Rey says. “I’ll show you sometime. I’m better at it than Finn.”

“Earth mages aren’t meant to leave the ground,” Finn says, nudging her, and gets up to go bring over a stack of folders. “Here. Battle plans.”

Poe bends to his work with a will.


	4. Chapter 4

“So I promised you bullets,” Finn says a few days later. “Here.” He spills a double handful of metal over Poe’s table. Poe picks one up and examines it curiously. It’s clearly hand-cast, and all around its width are inscribed tiny, precise runes.

“What do these all mean?” he asks curiously, deeply impressed by the level of craftsmanship.

Finn leans over his shoulder, warm against Poe’s back, and points to each rune in turn. “This one breaks shields; this one is for accuracy. This one tells the bullet that it wants to hit things, so that even a misdirection spell won’t throw your aim off. These are defenses against various things your enemies might throw at the bullets themselves - fire, earth, air, water; this one’s my best attempt at something that’ll keep the bullet from being affected by a chaos mage.” He grimaces. “My first try shooting at _him_ , he turned my bullets into very confused ducks.”

“...Ducks,” says Poe dubiously.

“I don’t think he _meant_ to,” Finn says, and grins. “They bit him. And crapped on his shoes.”

Poe puts his head down on his arms and giggles helplessly.

*

“Can we...do something?” Rey asks, later that night. She and Finn are both curled around Poe, clinging a little more than they usually do.

“What sort of something?” Poe asks. “Because if you want another round, darling, the spirit is willing but the flesh is sort of exhausted.”

Rey laughs. “Not quite what I meant,” she admits. “No. A magical something. Can we - can we put a mark on you? One that’ll mean we can always find you, always come for you?”

“It’d make us feel a _lot_ better,” Finn agrees. “This - I know you know it’s dangerous, but you don’t know _how_ dangerous it is to be helping us. And you don’t have shields, you can’t teleport - if they come for you -”

“Yes,” Poe says simply. “Yes, you can mark me.”

“Oh thank the _gods_ ,” says Rey, burying her face against Poe’s shoulder and clinging harder.

“Okay,” Finn says, taking a deep breath and snuggling impossibly closer to Poe, “do you want it to look like a natural mole, or would you prefer something like a tattoo?”

“Depends on the tattoo,” Poe says.

“I had a thought, back when Rey and I came up with this,” Finn says slowly. Poe isn’t even a little bit surprised that they discussed this beforehand. “Let me go get my sketch.”

He rolls out of bed and goes padding away down the stairs; Poe’s side is cold, briefly, until Rey rolls over entirely on top of him and somehow manages to cover all of him despite not being that large a person - clearly a skill learned while she was a cat. When Finn comes back, he turns on one of the lamps over by the door, casting soft yellow light into the room, and sits down on the side of the bed, holding a scrap of paper out towards Poe. Poe frees an arm from under Rey and takes it, then gapes at the lovely sketch. It’s a cat and a dog in a vaguely Celtic style, curled up together, and Poe’s breath catches in his throat at the symbolism. The two of them. He’d be marked with the two of them, forever.

“Yes, _please_ ,” he says hoarsely.

“Where do you want it?” Rey asks.

Poe thinks about it. “On my shoulder,” he says. “It’ll be covered by my clothes, but I’ll still be able to see it.”

Rey rolls off of him, up onto her knees beside Finn, and Poe blinks up at the two of them, at the heat and adoration in their eyes. “You’re sure?” Rey checks. “You’re sure you want this?”

“It’ll mean you’re ours,” Finn says softly. “Ours to keep.”

“I’m sure,” Poe says, meeting their eyes in turn. “Mark me.”

“Oh gods,” says Rey, very quietly, and they reach out together to put their hands on Poe’s shoulder, soft and gentle, and under Rey’s hand Poe’s shoulder grows warm - grows hot - not quite hot enough to burn, but not quite comfortable either - and then there is a moment that Poe can never quite describe, like having lightning run through him but in a good way, like being _seen_ all the way down to his soul, and they lift their hands away. Poe cranes his head to look at his shoulder, and sure enough, there curled around each other on his skin are Trooper and Sunshine. His lovers, marked on him forever.

“Thank you,” he says, looking up at them, and they both lean down for a messy, perfect three-way kiss.

*

It’s both easier and harder, after that, to watch them leave. Poe knows where they’re going, now, knows what they’re going to do when they get there, because the battle plans pass under his hands before they go to the General; he knows how dangerous it is, because he sees the after-action reports, too.

But the tattoo on his shoulder is warm, all the time, and he can put his palm over it and know that they are, in some sense, here with him, as well. It makes it easier to go about his daily routine, to walk Beebee morning and evening, jest with Jessika at the dog park - he told her that Trooper and Sunshine’s former owner had found them, because that’s a far less unlikely scenario than what _really_ happened - to go to work and play with plane blueprints and come home and pore over battle plans. He falls asleep, on the nights his lovers are not there with him, tracing the curves of the tattoo with a finger, round and round through the knots that mean that they can always find him.

*

When they _are_ home, both of his lovers seem absolutely fascinated with the mark. Finn likes to trace it with a finger, absently, as they lie panting together in bed, or as they sit shirtless at the counter drinking coffee and trying to wake up enough for the day ahead. Rey likes to bite it, gently, teeth sharp and careful against Poe’s skin.

He finally asks why it means so much to them after three or four weeks of their mildly obsessive attentions.

Finn hums, finger still tracing the elegant knotwork of the design. “We told you were were both orphans, yeah?”

“You mentioned it,” Poe says. He definitely hasn’t been thinking about it during random quiet hours and plotting how to make their birthdays, once he pries the actual dates out of them, the best birthdays they’ve ever had. No, of course not.

“Well, we never really had _homes_ , you know?” Finn says slowly. “Oh, Rey had foster families, and I had a really kind of depressing orphanage, and school was a refuge, and the General’s folk are family, but we never had anyplace to call our own, any _one_ to call our own, except each other.”

Rey nods. She’s watching Finn’s fingers with an almost catlike air, and Poe will not be at all surprised if she pounces on him at some point. Poe hasn’t yet attempted to dangle a piece of string in front of her to see what happens - Sunshine liked to play with string, but Rey is probably too dignified - but times like this it’s sort of tempting.

“But you,” she says, picking up Finn’s train of thought with disconcerting ease, “you’re ours now. You’re _marked_ as ours. That means - that means this is home, _you_ are home, we have a place and a person to come home _to_. A place to belong.”

“It’s very traditionally domestic really,” Finn observes. “A white picket fence, a dog…”

“...A three-way relationship with a man ten years your senior,” Poe adds dryly. Finn chuckles and shrugs.

“Well, okay, maybe not _that_ traditional. But you did rescue us, and that requires true love’s kiss, you know. Good thing any kind of love’ll do it, not just lovers - parent for child, owner for pet, sister for brother, those all work too.”

“Why couldn’t you rescue each other, then?” Poe asks curiously. Rey sighs.

“Because apparently the spell didn’t recognize animal-style kisses,” she says. “Believe me, we tried. Although it’s really probably for the best it didn’t work.” She grins brightly down at Poe. “It got us you.”

“So it did,” Poe admits, grinning back up at her. He’s already flat on his back on the bed, so when she pounces on him, pinning his shoulders down and kissing him fiercely, it’s not as dramatic as it might be - but it’s still effective enough. Poe stretches out, laces his hands together above his head. “You’ve got me,” he says quietly as she breaks the kiss. “Now what are you going to do with me?”

Rey smirks. “Remember back on that very first night, Finn was sorry I didn’t have any of my toys?”

“Oh fuck me,” Poe breathes.

“I intend to,” Rey says, grinning wider, sharper, almost predatory.

“She makes them all herself,” Finn says, chuckling softly. “They do all _sorts_ of fascinating things. Which one did you bring tonight?”

Rey just smirks at him. Finn laughs and leans up to kiss her. “Alright,” he says, “you’re calling the shots tonight. What do you want me to do?”

Rey glances down at Poe. “This okay?”

“Anything you want, sweetheart,” Poe says cheerfully.

Rey shivers, smirk widening into that predatory grin. “Alright then,” she says. “Finn, you get him ready. I want to watch.”

“Yes _ma’am_ ,” says Finn, laughing, and Rey rolls off of Poe to the edge of the bed, sitting up with her eyes fixed on them, so that Finn can take her place, warm and heavy atop Poe, and kiss him until Poe is moaning quietly into Finn’s mouth, Finn’s strong hands holding Poe’s wrists gently to the pillows above their heads. “Gonna stay put?” he asks after a few blissful minutes.

“Sure,” Poe says, a little vaguely. “Staying put, that’s me.”

Finn laughs against his lips, kisses him one more time for good measure and then lets go of his wrists and slides down to kneel between Poe’s legs. Rey tosses him the lube. Poe laces his own fingers together and holds on tightly as Finn bends down and licks a wet streak up Poe’s cock and slides a single slick finger into him. Every time Finn does this it _wrecks_ Poe, leaves him begging and desperate, and Poe knows Finn enjoys that - enjoys leaving Poe a whimpering heap in the middle of the bed. And who is Poe to deny his lover such an amusement?

Tonight, though, when Poe gets to the begging stage, Finn coaxes him up onto his hands and knees, shuffles around to brace Poe’s shoulders, and Rey slides into place behind Poe and puts her hands on his hips and asks, “Yes?” and Poe moans an affirmative, lets his spine bend into an easy curve as she slides her toy into him - thick and long, smooth and a little cool, and Poe puts his head down and whimpers for it - and then she murmurs something Poe doesn’t quite catch and the toy - the _magical_ toy, Poe realizes suddenly - begins to pulse and vibrate and - fuck, fuck, fuck, Poe is going to go _insane_ with pleasure. He gets his head up again and does his very best to swallow Finn’s lovely cock down, and then Rey leans forward and braces one hand on his shoulder, palm covering the tattoo, and puts her back into it.

The noise Poe makes when he comes, even muffled by his mouthful of cock, is loud enough to echo off the bedroom walls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to see the image that inspired this tattoo, I've got it over on my tumblr at http://imaginarygolux.tumblr.com/post/145472616432/it-occurred-to-me-that-i-could-post-this-this-is - should've thought of that earlier, but this whole tumblr thing is still a learning process!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the canon-typical violence comes in, guys: fair warning. (No permanent harm is done to any fluffballs.)

Poe is walking back from checking the mail, some days later, in the evening gloaming, when there’s a sound behind him. He’s not sure what makes him turn - it could so easily be his neighbors, or a stray cat - but he does, and there on the sidewalk are half a dozen people in long black robes and dark masks, moving to encircle him.

Poe doesn’t think. He draws the gun that Finn has modified for him, falls into a shooting stance, and the center dark figure laughs.

“You think you can hurt us with that, stupid Null?” the dark figure says, and Poe snarls and shoots him in the head.

He has a moment to be very pleased that the spelled bullets have done their job, as the masked figure collapses bonelessly to the ground, and then something hits him like the wrath of god and the world goes black.

*

He wakes to a slap in the face. There’s a masked figure looming over him, and he is chained to a wall. _Not_ the best awakening Poe’s ever had. (That prize, incidentally, goes to the morning he woke up to Finn’s mouth on his cock and Rey poised above him, waiting for the moment his eyes flickered open to kiss him senseless. That was a _good_ morning.)

Poe spits blood at his captor, because what else is he going to do?

The masked figure snarls. “You would do better to beg for mercy, _Null_.”

“Why?” Poe asks. “Would that work? Because I gotta tell you, the whole ambushing me outside my house and chaining me to a wall thing, not filling me with warm fuzzy feelings of hope.”

“It might prolong your miserable life,” the masked figure says.

“Yeah, wow,” Poe says, because his fallback plan is always sass. “So did you read the Wikipedia description of ‘dark lord’ and decide to just use all of it? I mean, what is it with the all-black theme you folks have going? Never heard of red? Grey? Really, monochrome is so last year.”

The spell that hits him feels like being flayed with whips of fire. Poe screams with it, doesn’t bother to pretend to be stoic and unbreakable. Everyone breaks eventually. But there’s this: his skin is burning, he thinks he’s bleeding, but his shoulder is warm in an entirely different way, warm like Rey’s palm gripping him, warm like Finn’s fingers tracing patterns on his skin.

“Do you know what I am going to _do_ to you, Null?” the masked figure growls.

“No, but I bet you’re going to tell me,” Poe says, voice hoarse from screaming. Damn, if this goes on too long he’s not going to be _able_ to talk back.

The masked figure looms a little closer. “I am going to flay your flesh from your bones,” he says, and Poe’s breath hisses between his teeth. “I am going to make you scream until your throat shreds, and tear every _scrap_ of information you could _possibly_ have from your pitiful mind, and when you have told me everything I wish to know, I will leave your mangled carcass for your _lovers_ to find.”

“...Charming,” says Poe after a moment, once he thinks he has his voice under control and won’t sound as utterly terrified as he is. “Really great hospitality you have around here. Five stars.”

The fire-flaying spell is even less fun the second time. Poe bites his lip bloody before he screams, this time, because losing his ability to talk actually scares him rather more than the rest of this whole fucking awful mess.

“Big brave magic user,” he says once he’s stopped screaming. “Hiding behind a dime-store mask and torturing someone chained to a wall. Yeah, I’m _real_ impressed.”

“I will cut your tongue out of your foolish mouth,” the masked figure snarls.

“Hard to get information out of me then,” Poe says, trying to hide the shiver of fear that courses through him.

“Ah, but I can pluck it out of your mind,” the masked figure says smugly, and Poe blanches, shrinks back against the wall as the masked figure reaches for him -

And an explosion echoes through the hallway outside the cell. Poe and the masked figure _both_ turn to look at the barred door, and Poe suspects that under the mask the other man looks just as startled as Poe feels.

Poe’s shoulder grows warm again, and Poe grins, tasting blood and not caring. “You’ve never read the Evil Overlord’s Handbook, have you?” he asks his captor.

His captor slaps him again - apparently too distracted to cast a spell, and isn’t _that_ good data to have - and then the door to the cell shatters in a hail of splinters (Poe is briefly grateful that his captor is in front of him, and catches most of them) and Rey’s unmistakable voice shouts something Poe doesn’t quite catch, and an enormous fireball picks the masked figure up and flings him against the wall to Poe’s left.

“Fucking hell,” says Poe faintly. When Finn had said Rey threw fireballs, Poe had assumed that meant little softball-sized things, not missiles the size of a large _dog_.

The masked figure struggles to his feet, cloak smoldering, swearing loudly, and Finn - gentle, sweet-natured Finn - takes a single step into the room and gestures sharply, snaps a single furious word, and one of the enormous stones from the wall slides out of place and drops with a truly sickening crunch onto the masked figure’s head.

Poe blinks at the crumpled heap of robes that was, until very recently, a person, and then turns and is sick all over the floor at Rey’s feet. Rey braces him and brushes his hair out of his face and murmurs soothing things - or at least Poe think they’re soothing things until he stops retching long enough to hear, and realizes that what she’s _actually_ saying is, “...every fucking one of them, I will tear their _hearts_ out, I will build you a trophy of their _bones_ …”

Beebee, who has apparently accompanied Poe’s rescuers, leans against Poe’s ankles and whines.

Finn is examining the shackles holding Poe to the wall, and as Poe straightens up, spitting the taste of blood and bile from his mouth, Finn says, “Aha! Got it,” and wraps a hand around the nearer shackle. It breaks like a dry stick under his fingers, and Poe shakes his hand free as Finn reaches for the other one.

“There,” Finn says softly, gathering Poe’s hands up and rubbing his wrists gently. “Hey. We found you. You’re gonna be okay.”

“Yeah,” Poe says a little hoarsely, and take the water bottle Rey holds out, swishes a mouthful to clear the awful taste from his tongue and then drains half of it. “Yeah, I am. That was quick, by the way; how long did they have me, an hour or so?”

“Three,” says Finn, grimly. “We had to scout a bit. We’ve never been able to find their base, before - good shielding on it - and then we had to deal with the sentry.”

“Singular?” Poe asks, mildly surprised, and crouches down to pet Beebee, rubbing her behind her ears and letting her lick him all over to make sure he’s okay.

“They’re idiots,” Rey explains. “Also I think the one on your sidewalk with a bullet in his brain might have been supposed to be the _other_ sentry. Nice shooting, by the way.”

“Shit, is that still _there_?” Poe asks. His neighbors are _not_ going to be happy to see a corpse lying around.

“No,” Rey assures him. “We burned it.”

“ _She_ burned it, I buried what was left,” Finn corrects her.

“...Ordinarily I would say that that’s not how to get rid of dead bodies, but fuck that fucker,” Poe says after a moment’s thought. “Okay. Now what?”

Finn and Rey glance at each other. “Um,” says Finn. “Well. I suspect someone’s heard the commotion by now.”

“We weren’t exactly subtle,” Rey agrees.

Finn tugs his spelled gun out of its holster and hands it to Poe. “Here - no idea where yours is, but you shouldn’t be weaponless. Stay between us if you can; we have shields up.”

“I can do that,” Poe agrees. He gathers Beebee into his arms, arranges her so he’ll still be able to shoot while carrying her, and stands.

“Sorry about bringing her,” Rey says. “But she insisted, and, well - we were kind of in a hurry.”

“She saw them take you,” Finn says soberly. “She was frantic by the time we got there.”

Poe says, slowly, “Can you _talk_ to her?”

Finn shrugs a little sheepishly. “Yeah, sort of. Holdover from the curse, I think. Didn’t _use_ to be able to talk to dogs.”

“Huh,” says Poe, blinking down at Beebee, who cranes her neck up and licks his nose. “Okay then, that’s a thing. I will think about that sometime when we are not in the middle of the most stereotypical evil base ever to be built.”

“It does look like they ordered it wholesale out of a catalog, doesn’t it,” Finn says, snorting a laugh.

“Evil Overlords R Us,” Rey says, nodding. “Alright, you got your feet under you?”

“I’m good,” Poe says. “Let’s get out of this horror show.”

“Follow me,” Rey says, and leads the way.

*

She burns a masked figure - a Knight of Ren, Poe assumes - to ash and gone as they come around a corner, not bothering to give him a chance to defend himself. Another Knight of Ren tries to sneak up on them, and Finn, grim-faced, opens the earth beneath the masked figure’s feet and drops him into what sure as hell looks like a bottomless abyss; the earth snaps shut again once the Knight is gone, cutting off his shrill scream with a dreadful finality.

Poe’s been to war before, but that was from a plane - he’s not actually been this _close_ to violent death before. It’s ugly, and he hates it, and he shoots the next Knight who comes around a corner without even flinching, because the alternative is maybe letting the asshole hurt one of his lovers, and Poe will do damn near _anything_ to keep them safe.


	6. Chapter 6

They round another corner, and Rey stumbles to a stop, unwontedly graceless, and swears. Poe peers around her carefully, and hisses in a sharp breath. There’s a chamber in front of them, with a throne in its center, and a really _creepy_ looking fellow standing in front of it, gesturing at the shadows. Poe blinks at the shadows for a moment, and - yep - there are _things_ emerging from them, things with glowing eyes and long black claws. Beebee whines in terror. Poe feels like whining, too.

“Shit, demons,” Rey says. “Stay behind us.”

“Got your back,” Poe agrees, as Finn comes around to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Rey.

Poe can’t really keep track of much of the battle that follows. The shadows lunge towards his lovers, and his lovers send fire and light back at them. The creepy guy snarls words Poe doesn’t know, and the faint shimmer of the shields Rey and Finn are holding shakes and bows but holds. Poe puts Beebee down between his ankles and turns so that he can watch the battle and back down the corridor at the same time, hoping he’s not going to be rushed by Knights of Ren, because he’s not sure how many of them he can deal with, but he’ll by god die trying.

Finn makes a low sound of pain, and Poe can’t help turning to see - sees that there’s a set of deep cuts along Finn’s shoulder, the marks of a demon’s claws - that Rey’s tan clothes are spattered with blood - there are more demons, far more, too many, and Poe’s breath catches in his throat and he wants to scream against the unfairness of it - they were so close, they were almost _out_ , they cannot die here -

And Beebee launches herself from between his legs, straight through the demons, who ignore her, and bites the creepy guy’s ankle as hard as she can.

Corgis are not large dogs, but even a small dog can bite pretty hard when it wants to, and the creepy guy has been so busy urging his demonic minions on that he isn’t expecting sudden sharp teeth in his ankle. He yells, shrill and furious, and the demons sort of _waver_ , become less tangible as his attention turns from them, and Beebee growls and bites again.

The creepy guy leans down and _grabs_ her and _throws_ her across the room, and Poe sees red. Torturing him, yeah, that sucks; attacking his lovers, infuriating but they can defend themselves - but nobody, _nobody_ hurts his dog. He doesn’t stop to think if it’s a good idea, just raises Finn’s gun and empties the entire clip into the creepy guy’s chest.

The creepy guy howls in pain and anger, and the demons shriek as they lose cohesion, become smoke and shadow and vanish, and Finn shouts something, sounding triumphant and furious, and the entire center of the ceiling gives way and falls, enormous blocks of stone like the wrath of god, upon the dark mage.

Poe blinks at the wreckage for a moment, and then turns away to look for Beebee. She’s picking herself up off the floor, shaking herself, and Poe scrambles towards her, drops the gun in order to pick her up and pat her all over and discover, to his immense and astonished relief, that she is far more shaken than hurt. She whines and licks his nose, and Poe rubs her behind the ears and tells her what a good dog she is, how brave, how clever, how dear to him.

Finn and Rey join him after a few moments, leaning up against his shoulders and looping their arms around his waist, their free hands petting Beebee gently.

“Good dog,” Finn says hoarsely. “Good dog, Beebee.”

“Nice shooting, Poe,” Rey adds.

“Is he dead?” Poe asks, not quite daring to turn and look at the heap of tumbled stone.

“As a fucking doornail,” Finn says. “Dropping a whole heap of rocks on a dark lord isn’t the _usual_ procedure, but I can’t see any reason it shouldn’t _work_.”

“Let me cauterize those for you,” Rey says to Finn. “No point in you bleeding all over everything.”

Finn shuffles around until Rey can reach his injured shoulder without either of them letting go of Poe - Poe’s glad of it, because he’s feeling distinctly shaky in the knees - and Rey murmurs something and touches the gashes on Finn’s shoulder, which promptly stop bleeding. Rey herself has half a dozen small cuts, but nothing too dangerous. Poe feels like he’s bruised all over, but the fire-flaying spell doesn’t appear to _actually_ cause injury, just feel like it, so he might actually be the least damaged of all of them just now.

There’s a noise in the corridor behind them, and Poe turns wearily to see if they’re about to be attacked _again_ \- shit, he doesn’t have the gun, where did he drop it - and stops, gaping, at the sight of the General framed in the doorway, half a dozen mages at her back.

*

“Which bit of ‘wait for backup’ is so goddamn difficult to understand, you young idiots?” Leia demands of Rey and Finn once they’ve been inspected by the healer - a solemn woman named Kalonia - and Finn’s shoulder is bandaged and Rey’s small injuries have been tended. Poe got a painkiller, for which he is quite grateful.

“They were hurting Poe,” Rey says, as though that is all the explanation that could be needed.

Poe sighs. “Dearest,” he tells her, “I am immensely grateful that you came and got me when you did, but you could have been _killed_. Another half an hour probably wouldn’t have been _that_ bad.” He’s lying through his teeth - the memory of the masked figure threatening to cut out his tongue is vivid and terrible in his mind - but they could have _died_ coming in without backup.

“But we didn’t get killed,” Finn points out, with the air of someone making an unassailable point. “And they were _hurting_ you.”

Leia sighs. Poe scrubs a hand over his face. “You should both probably stop talking now, before you dig yourselves any deeper,” he suggests.

“But you _like_ it when I talk,” Finn says, with a grin.

Leia puts both hands over her ears. “La la la la, don’t want to know,” she says, slightly desperately. Rey snickers.

“Okay,” Leia says, taking a deep breath and putting her hands down. “Don’t do this again, okay, you two? I will grant you extenuating circumstances for this one, but the next time I tell you to wait for backup I expect you to fucking wait for backup.”

“Yes, General,” they chorus, looking a little more subdued.

“That said,” Leia says, and reaches up to clap them on their uninjured shoulders, “good job. I am very proud of you both.”

Finn looks like he’s just been given the best Christmas present ever; Rey looks like she might cry with happiness.

“Back to headquarters with all three of you,” Leia adds. “We’re going to scour this place top to bottom, and then I’ll want to debrief all _three_ of you - but you’ve all done enough. Go on back, have a hot meal, sit down for a while. You’ve done a good day’s work today.”

“Yes, General,” Rey says, and she and Finn reach out to reel Poe and Beebee in to the circle of their arms.

*

They sit him down in a corner of the Tactics room in headquarters and fuss over him, bringing him cocoa and soup and pillows, a bowl of meat scraps for Beebee and a special pillow just for her, until Poe tugs them down on either side of them and says, “Come here and sit and eat with me, darlings.”

Then they curl into him, clinging to him like they’re afraid he’ll vanish if they let go. Poe loops his arms around their shoulders, clings back just as tightly.

“Thank you for coming to get me,” he says quietly after a few minutes.

“Thank you for staying alive long enough for us to _get_ there,” Finn says.

“Thought for sure we were going to find nothing but your body,” Rey murmurs, and it sounds like she’s crying. Her face is buried in Poe’s shoulder, and Poe strokes her hair gently, kisses the top of her head.

“Hey, now,” he says quietly. “I’m tougher than that.”

“Yeah, you are,” Finn says, and now _he’s_ sounding choked up too. “Took out a dark lord, didn’t you?”

“That was all Beebee,” Poe says, and she looks up at the sound of her name and then leaps ungracefully up into Poe’s lap. Rey loops an arm around her to keep her there, and Finn scratches her behind the ears. “And you dropping a fucking ton of stone on him.”

“Nope, he was pretty much dead before I took the ceiling down,” Finn says. “I was just making sure. Don’t want him managing to rise from the almost-dead.”

“If he tries it I’ll burn him to _cinders_ ,” Rey says fiercely.

“Yeah, you will,” Poe says. “You guys’ll keep me safe.”

“Damn straight we will,” Finn tells him. “Never letting anyone hurt you like that again.”

“Good,” says Leia from the doorway, surprising all of them. “May I join you?”

“Please do,” Poe says. Finn and Rey don’t move from their huddle, and Poe sort of shrugs at Leia as she sits down. Leia grins back.

“We’ve scoured the whole damned place,” she informs him. “We think some of them got away - five confirmed dead from you, plus Snoke, and we took out three more. We don’t think there were more than twelve of them left, so perhaps four still on the loose. I’ve sent a team to ward your house properly, Poe: the Knights won’t be able to get within a hundred yards of it once Connix is done. Should have done that earlier, and I do apologize for not doing so, but we didn’t think you’d been discovered, and having wards in a purely nonmagical area would have drawn attention.”

“I understand completely,” Poe assures her, and he does - in point of fact, she’d discussed this with him weeks ago, and he’d agreed to keep hoping his relative anonymity would keep him safe rather than risk putting up wards and attracting attention. But Leia looks - guilt-stricken is the only phrase Poe can come up with - and he wants to reassure her as much as possible.

Leia nods and relaxes a little. “So. While Connix and her team are warding the hell out of your house - tell me _exactly_ what happened.”

Poe takes a deep breath. “Alright. So. This evening as I was getting the mail…”


	7. Chapter 7

They’re all so exhausted they’re staggering by the time they get home - Poe’s only barely coherent enough to get the ward-password from Connix before she and her team leave - and they take turns in the shower in a sort of mutual silent daze, curl up in a heap under the covers and fall asleep before Poe can so much as start trying to process the day’s events. They wake up ravenous three hours after dawn, and Poe makes an omelette with every egg he has in the house and most of the contents of his vegetable drawer, grates cheese onto it until the eggs are nearly hidden under gooey deliciousness. Rey toasts a stack of bread as tall as Beebee, and Finn - bless the man - finds the oranges Poe had almost forgotten about and produces a pitcher of fresh-squeezed orange juice with a proud smile.

The omelette vanishes as fast as Poe can serve it onto his lovers’ plates, and Poe devours his share and four pieces of toast slathered with butter and jam and goes and hunts down a bunch of grapes and a pair of just slightly overripe pears for dessert. Watching his lovers eat slices of pear from his fingers is...sort of inspiring, actually.

They end up curled on his couch, all wearing Poe’s old sweatpants - Poe has never been so glad that he went through that phase where that was all he wore around the house - and taking turns to scratch Beebee’s tummy and assure her that she is the best dog in the whole world, yes she is. And then Rey looks up at Poe with something like despair in her lovely eyes and says, “You - we don’t have to stay. We can leave, if you - if you’d rather not have us here.”

“What the fuck,” says Poe. “Why - why would you leave? Why in the name of god would I not want you here?”

“We got you _hurt_ ,” Finn says, a little desperately. “You’d have been _fine_ if it wasn’t - if you weren’t helping us.”

Poe takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, “slow down a bit, buddies. Yes, okay, I got hurt. It was not fun. I do not want to do it again. _But_.” He fixes them both with a stern look. “You guys warned me before I got involved of all the possible risks. You were _very clear_ about the danger. I knew what I was risking, and I went into it with my eyes open. And you guys gave me a weapon that worked against my enemies, and then you guys _came and got me_ before I got any more than purely cosmetic damage. Yes, okay, helping you is dangerous. But so is crossing the street, and I’ve got a lot more control over when and how I put myself in danger with _you_ than I do over whether some asshole going three times the speed limit is going to come roaring down the street.”

Finn and Rey are both looking sort of poleaxed. Poe reaches out and takes their hands, lifts them to his lips and kisses their knuckles. “In case I have not been sufficiently clear about this,” he says, “I love you. I _adore_ you. I would go to hell and back for you two, and count it an easy trip. My house is your house. You are welcome to my clothes, my food, my bed, my life. When we’ve managed to get rid of the last of the Knights of Ren and this whole little war is over I would really like it if you would come and live with me permanently, and if you don’t want to then my door will be open to you until the day I die.”

“Oh,” says Rey quietly. “You - you really mean that?”

“I really, _really_ mean that,” Poe assures her.

“Oh,” says Rey again, looking stunned. And then she very carefully lifts Beebee out of Poe’s lap and onto the floor, and launches herself into Poe’s arms, clinging to him fiercely. Finn wraps himself around both of them, kissing Rey’s head and Poe’s face and anything else he can reach, the widest smile on his face that Poe has ever seen. And then Rey raises her head and looks at Finn and says, tear-choked and joyful, “Finn - Finn, we’re home.”

“Yeah,” Finn says softly. “Yeah, we are.”

Poe manages to get an arm around Finn and one around Rey and hangs on to both of them just as hard as he can, and if there are tears on his cheeks, too, they are both kind enough not to mention it.

*

They spend the afternoon in bed, of course. Poe suspects that if he were still bearing the marks of his imprisonment and torture, his lovers would kiss each of them better; but since magic has removed all sign of his ordeal, they have to settle for just kissing every inch of his skin. Poe tries hard to reciprocate when he can; at one point he manages to pin Finn’s hips down and spends several long and lovely minutes with his mouth on Finn’s cock, doing his absolute best to make Finn scream with pleasure; and at one point he gets a hand between Rey’s legs, touches her just the way she likes until she comes gasping, clenching around his hand, nails biting into his shoulders and head thrown back in ecstasy; but for the most part, there are two of them and only one of him, and Poe is overwhelmed with their clever hands, their sweet mouths, the way they press against him warm and wanting.

Poe is half-desperate by the time Rey rolls over, tugs him atop her and wraps her legs around his hips and pulls him into her, hooks her heels around his thighs and nudges his legs apart so Finn can kneel between them. Poe braces himself on his elbows and kisses her, lets her swallow his moans as Finn slides into him, and Finn curls himself warm and heavy across Poe’s back, broad shoulders blocking out the world, and Poe feels - surrounded. Safe. There is a perfect moment, there between his lovers, surrounding and surrounded, loving and loved in equal measure, and Poe clings to it, kisses Rey and laughs when she bites at his lips, cranes his head back for clumsy half-missed kisses from Finn, comes with a truly embarrassing noise and laughs as he does for the sheer joy of this perfect, priceless moment.

*

That night, Poe dreams, and in his dream he stands on a cloudscape, the sky that perfect clear blue you only get so high up that the air is too thin to breathe, the color that means ‘freedom’ to him. Rey and Finn are there, too, admiring the view, and then Rey hands Poe a wand with a broad smile.

“I can’t do magic,” Poe tells her, and Rey laughs.

“In the real world, no. But this is a dream, and here you can do anything you want.”

Poe takes the wand and gives Rey a dubious look. She and Finn both nod encouragingly. Some tiny, more alert part of Poe’s brain points out that Rey can walk in people’s dreams - that this might well be a little more real than dreams tend to be - and Poe shrugs and waves the wand and turns the cloud beneath their feet into an enormous, sinuous, wingless dragon, all swooping lines and elegant whiskers, that turns its head to grin at him and then swims off into the cloudscape with the three of them on its broad back.

Poe blinks at the wand in his hand for a minute, and then grins and settles himself on the dragon’s back, Finn pressed up behind him, and starts having fun. The clouds around him turn into castles and elephants and a towering sculpture of Beebee that makes Finn snort with laughter, into a flock of tiny fighter planes no bigger than corgis, into a sailing ship only half the length of the dragon. Rey leaps from the dragon’s back onto the deck of the ship as its cloud-white sails billow, summons a cloud-sword for herself and poses majestically at the bow, and Poe waves the wand and turns one of his tiny fighter planes into a properly piratical hat which she scoops out of the air and dons with a bright, beautiful laugh.

Finn wraps his arms around Poe’s waist and tucks his chin over Poe’s shoulder and chuckles, warm and sweet in Poe’s ear, and Poe leans back against him and sends his tiny cloud planes looping around Rey’s head and glories in his lovers’ laughing joy.

*

Poe wakes up with Finn on his right shoulder and Rey on his left shoulder and Beebee on his feet. His right hand is asleep and there’s a long hair tangled around his toes under the blanket and he’s rather sticky and a little sore, and he is also happier than a man has any right to be.

Rey stirs against his side, rolls up onto an elbow and kisses Poe with her eyes still half-closed and bleary with sleep, mumbles against his lips, “Ya har, me hearty, prepare to be boarded.”

Poe laughs so hard it shakes Finn awake. “What, _again_ , you insatiable woman?”

“Who’s being insatiable?” Finn asks, leaning up to steal his own kiss. “Also, hello, loves, what a wonderful morning it is!”

Poe laughs harder, and Beebee wakes up and starts bouncing on the end of the bed and yipping eagerly for her breakfast, and Rey leans over Poe’s chest and kisses Finn soft and sweet, and really, Poe thinks, if the rest of his life is going to be full of moments just like this, he will be a very happy man indeed.

“Let me up, loves,” he says. “Breakfast time for good little corgis.”

“Pay the toll,” Finn says, and collects a kiss before he rolls away; and then of course Rey needs one too; and Poe, finally padding down the stairs in nothing but a pair of rather battered sweatpants as his lovers argue over who gets the shower first, grins down at his dog and shakes his head in wonder at the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the end of Domestication! There will be a short one-shot in this series going up tomorrow, and then next Monday I'll start another longfic. Thank you all for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Updates Mondays.


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